Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Cnews - server don't work so good
Message-ID: <1989Nov15.203509.6405@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <GNB.89Nov10181703@baby.bby.oz>
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 89 20:35:09 GMT

In article <GNB.89Nov10181703@baby.bby.oz> gnb@bby.oz (Gregory N. Bond) writes:
>1) The newsrun script assumes that the login shell for news is
>   /bin/sh, as the non-server machines run a command like
>	rsh $server "PATH=$PATH relaynews -n -r" < article
>  When news uses csh then this rsh command fails , silently...

Frankly, we consider this a botch in rsh.  If we wanted the C Shell [he says,
suppressing the great temptation to expand "C" into some suitable adjective],
we'd have said "rcsh".  Yet another case of misguided attempts at "user
friendliness" resulting in programmer-hostile software.

Fixed in next patch.

>2) THIS IS A FATAL bug: rnews is run on the client, and it calls
>   spacefor to see if in.coming has enough room for a batch. If you do
>   a spacefor on a client, then that is converted into an rsh to the
>   server.  Unfortunatly, the rsh command then gobbles the (first part
>   of) the input article batch as it is NOT run with the -n flag.

Now this is a *BUG* in rsh.  Period.  It's simply not acting the way a
Unix command is supposed to.  Yes, I realize it's difficult to fix, but
if I wanted an operating system that a 14-year-old could write, I'd run
MSDOS. :-)  Programmers should not be forced to constantly work around bugs
like this.

Sigh.  Fixed in next patch.
-- 
A bit of tolerance is worth a  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
megabyte of flaming.           | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
